December+5,+1933

 The [|21st amendment] ratifies making alcohol legal once again. [|President Roosevelt] reminds us that "this return of individual freedom shall not be accompanied by the repugnant conditions that obtained prior to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment and those that have existed since its adoption."  Utah was the last state to vote for the 21st Amendment, which will repeal the 18th amendment. President Roosevelt still hopes that saloon’s will stay banned by saying "I ask especially, that no state shall, by law or otherwise, authorize the return of the saloon, either in its old form or in some modern guise."  The 18th Amendment was though to be the country's panacea to almost all crime in America when it was passed. The amendment never enforced. The highest amount of agents from the federal government enforcing probation was only 2,500. It did not take to long until this lack of enforcement affected peoples’ opinion. In 1925, H. L. Mencken wrote that "Five years of prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."  Even people who greatly supported prohibition before the 18th amendment see the problems it has caused. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. donated large amounts of money to the Anti-Saloon League, and never drank his entire life later changed his opinion and wrote in a letter on why he no longer supported the 18th Amendment. “When the Eighteenth Amendment was passed I earnestly hoped- with a host of advocates of temperance-that it would be generally supported by public opinion and thus the day be hastened when the value to society of men with minds and bodies free from the undermining effects of alcohol would be generally realized. That this has not been the result, but rather that drinking has generally increased; that the speakeasy has replaced the saloon, not only unit for unit, but probably two-fold if not three-fold; that a vast array of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale; that many of our best citizens, piqued at what they regarded as an infringement of their private rights, have openly and unabashedly disregarded the Eighteenth Amendment; that as an inevitable result respect for all law has been greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree-I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe.”  Pauline Sabin is the founder of the Women's Legion for True Temperance, because she wanted America to be a safer place for her children. She soon became distressed however with the hypocrisy and corruption of politicians as well as the organized crime. She said that “In preprohibition days, mothers had little fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon-keeper's license was revoked if he was caught selling liquor to minors. Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children."  After 13 years of prohibition America is ready for change. The 18th amendment did not do what it was suppose to do but what it has done is still debatable for only time will tell.
 * Prohibition Repeal Is Ratified at 5:32 P.M.; Roosevelt Asks Nation to Bar the Saloon; New York Celebrates With Quiet Restraint. **